2012 Pt. 2

Humanity then paused. There was a huge push to build bomb shelters and an equally strong drive to evict the bugs from the moon. The blue men were all atwitter. Some spoke of the need for the dispersal of the population over the countryside, others wanted people to converge on the cities and hide in the vast underground spaces. There was no common consensus and the NEU was silent on the matter, saying only that civilians should take whatever precautions they thought necessary.

On December 22, 2012, Earth launched it's second offensive of the war. This time it was a mix of hundreds of unmanned "point defense" satellites launched the old fashion way; dozens of "fighter-frigates" with exotic new propulsion systems; and twelve more of the massive dreadnoughts.

The strategists had long sense realized the folly of floating single ships to fight the alien armada, and had forbidden any unorganized launches. The result had been a trickle of small, mini-gun wielding, unmanned birds who attempted to intercept the shells falling to the earth. The alien bombardment was taking its toll. Cities demolished, mountains flattened, croplands destroyed and entire regions laid waste. If not for the CERN inspired particle beams popping up at research institutions all over the world, humanity would have had to surrender if possible or become extinct during that first terrible year.

The scientists were quite smug when around politicians that had tried to block what they had called "Billion dollar holes in the ground." The much maligned research projects were destroying incoming shells from the moon and racking up kills. The moon's nearside was quickly made uninhabitable for the bugs, and with the launch of the Combined Fleet, the entire orb was soon besieged. The aliens had dug in deep, and were still lobbing shells at the earth, but fewer and fewer were getting through. While a determined infantry was judged as necessary to root out the last of the aliens present, the battle for Earth-Space was deemed over, a decisive victory for Earth. The invaders that remained hide deep under the surface, their landing boats destroyed and with the great Tin-Pot Transport having been stripped for the occupation, they were trapped on the dusty orb.

Probes showed the bugs were constructing a massive network of defense satellites around Saturn, digging entrenched firing positions in its many small moon, and leaving many more in orbit. They seemed to be constructing a base or fueling facility on Titan, but no probes could survive to examine the place from a close distance and so the mystery remained.

Man's attention shifted towards the red planet.